By: Grace Isabel Colbron; Augusta Groner

Joseph Muller, Secret Service detective of the Imperial Austrian police, is one of the great experts in his profession. In personality he differs greatly from other famous detectives. He has neither the impressive authority of Sherlock Holmes, nor the keen brilliancy of Monsieur Lecoq. Muller is a small, slight, plain-looking man, of indefinite age, and of much humbleness of mien. A naturally retiring, modest disposition, and two external causes are the reasons for Mulle...

By: Henry J. Coke

THE First Edition of this book was written, from beginning to end, in the short space of five months, without the aid of diary or notes, beyond those cited as such from a former work. The Author, having no expectation that his reminiscences would be received with the kind indulgence of which this Second Edition is the proof, with diffidence ventured to tell so many tales connected with his own unimportant life as he has done. Emboldened by the reception his 'Tracks' have...

By: Mary Cockle

OH stay thy dang'rous pen—nor seek to move, With the false pleadings of repentant love! Wake not again the retrospective sigh, Or the wild tear of trembling agony, Taught by THY hand in bitterness to flow From the FULL chalice of domestic woe! Can HE, who spurn'd affection's sacred chains, Who scorns all laws, and whom no fear restrains; Who, coldly vicious, whilst the nuptial flow'r Shed its chaste beauties o'er the bridal hour, Left its rich graces, blighted and forlor...

By: Mary Cockle

'TIS the deep sound of Sorrow! ENGLAND'S knell, That strikes upon the Heart!—her hallowing Tear, Speaks the strong feeling of her last Farewell: A Nation's sorrow o'er a Monarch's Bier. It falls for ENGLAND'S FATHER!—HIM whose form Tho' shrouded in affliction, seemed to stay, A guardian Spirit lingering 'midst the storm, With sweet assurance of a tranquil day. It was a holy spell, around us cast In tempests and in darkness! 'twas a beam, That in the wildness of each wint...

By: Louisiana Barraud Cocke

The history of all ancient nations is much involved in obscurity, uncertainty, and contradiction. But as these adventures of barbarous nations even if they were correctly recorded could afford no entertainment to men born in a more cultivated age this uncertainty is not to be regretted. All Ancient writers agreed in representing the first inhabitants of Britain as a tribe of Gauls or Belta who setteled that island from the neighboring continent. The south-east parts of B...

By: Frances Power Cobbe

THERE was an allegory rather popular about thirty years ago, whose manifest purpose was to impress on the juvenile mind that tendency which Mr. Matthew Arnold has ingeniously designated Hebraism. The hero of the tale descends upon earth from some distant planet, and is conducted by a mundane cicerone through one of our great cities, where he beholds the docks and arsenals, the streets and marts, the galleries of art, and the palaces of royalty. The visitor admires everyt...

By: Irvin S. Cobb

Now that the last belated bill for services professionally rendered has been properly paid and properly receipted; now that the memory of the event, like the mark of the stitches, has faded out from a vivid red to a becoming pink shade; now that I pass a display of adhesive tape in a drug-store window without flinching -- I sit me down to write a little piece about a certain matter -- a small thing, but mine own -- to wit, That Operation.

By: Irvin S. Cobb

Foreword. It has always seemed to me that the principal drawback about the average guidebook is that it is over-freighted with facts. Guidebooks heretofore have made a specialty of facts—have abounded in them; facts to be found on every page and in every paragraph. Reading such a work, you imagine that the besotted author said to himself, I will just naturally fill this thing chock-full of facts—and then went and did so to the extent of a prolonged debauch. Now personall...

By: Irvin S. Cobb

Tummies Dr. Woods Hutchinson says that fat people are happier than other people. How does Dr. Woods Hutchinson know? Did he ever have to leave the two top buttons of his vest unfastened on account of his extra chins? Has the pressure from within against the waistband where the watchfob is located ever been so great in his case that he had partially to undress himself to find out what time it was? Does he have to take the tailor's word for it that his trousers need pressing?

By: Irvin S. Cobb

For a good many years now I have been carrying this idea round with me. It was more or less of a loose and unformed idea, and it wouldn't jell. What brought it round to the solidification point was this: Here the other week, being half sick, I was laid up over Sunday in a small hotel in a small seacoast town. I had read all the newspapers and all the magazines I could get hold of. The local bookstore, of course, was closed. They won't let the oysters stay open on Sunday ...

By: Emma B. Cobb

IT was not so very long ago, for it was only about a year before the outbreak of the great rebellion, that Colonel Sibthorpe, living at Catalpa Grove, County, Kentucky, wrote to Mr. Allen, a merchant in Boston, with whom he had large dealings, to procure for him a governess. The correspondent was requested to look out for a young person capable of finishing the education of the colonel's two motherless daughters, aged respectively eighteen and sixteen, and of preparing h...

By: J. Storer Clouston

Long after King Estein had joined his fathers on the little holm beyond Hernersfiord, and Helgi, Earl of Askland, had become but a warlike memory, the skalds of Sogn still sang this tale of Vandrad the Viking. It contained much wonderful magic, and some astonishingly hard strokes, as they told it; but reading between their lines, the magic bears a strong resemblance to many spells cast even at this day, and as for the sword strokes, there was need for them to be hard in ...

By: Henry James

The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, I remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I may mention, was that of an apparition in just such an old house as had gathered us for the occasion -- an appearance, of a ...

By: Henry James

The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be, remember no comment uttered till somebody happened to say that it was the only case he had met in which such a visitation had fallen on a child. The case, I may mention, was that of an apparition in just such an old house as had gathered us for the occasion -- an appearance, of a dr...

By: Henry James

It was one of the secret opinions, such as we all have, of Peter Brench that his main success in life would have consisted in his never having committed himself about the work, as it was called, of his friend, Morgan Mallow. This was a subject on which it was, to the best of his belief, impossible, with veracity, to quote him, and it was nowhere on record that he had, in the connection, on any occasion and in any embarrassment, either lied or spoken the truth. Such a tri...

By: Henry James

The people of France have made it no secret that those of England, as a general thing, are, to their perception, an inexpressive and speechless race, perpendicular and unsociable, unaddicted to enriching any bareness of contact with verbal or other embroidery. This view might have derived encouragement, a few years ago, in Paris, from the manner in which four persons sat together in silence, one fine day about noon, in the garden, as it is called, of the Palais de l'Indu...

By: Henry James

I was too pleased with what it struck me that, as an old, old friend, I had done for her, not to go to her that very afternoon with the news. I knew she worked late, as in general I also did; but I sacrificed for her sake a good hour of the February daylight. She was in her studio, as I had believed she would be, where her card ('Mary J. Tredick' — not Mary Jane, but Mary Juliana) was manfully on the door; a little tired, a little old and a good deal spotted, but with he...

By: Henry James

When, a few years since, two good ladies, previously not intimate nor indeed more than slightly acquainted, found themselves domiciled together in the small but ancient town of Marr, it was as a result, naturally, of special considerations. They bore the same name and were second cousins; but their paths had not hitherto crossed; there had not been coincidence of age to draw them together; and Miss Frush, the more mature, had spent much of her life abroad. She was a blan...

By: Henry James

The weather had turned so much worse that the rest of the day was certainly lost. The wind had risen and the storm gathered force; they gave from time to time a thump at the firm windows and dashed even against those protected by the verandah their vicious splotches of rain. Beyond the lawn, beyond the cliff, the great wet brush of the sky dipped deep into the sea. But the lawn, already vivid with the touch of May, showed a violence of watered green; the budding shrubs a...

By: Henry James

MrsGereth had said she would go with the rest to church, but suddenly it seemed to her that she should not be able to wait even till church-time for relief: breakfast, at Waterbath, was a punctual meal, and she had still nearly an hour on her hands. Knowing the church to be near, she prepared in her room for the little rural walk, and on her way down again, passing through corridors and observing imbecilities of decoration, the æsthetic misery of the big commodious house...